In order to determine the performance of space-based and/or airborne sensors surface reference measurements are used. The collection of high quality surface measurements is challenging and especially at the spatial scales environmental remote sensing systems. Presently, when possible, groups of individuals (on foot) or distributed networks of sensors are deployed (at fixed sites), to utilize sensors to collect reference measurements over time. These processes are limited to specific sites (in reference to the disturbed networks), labor-intensive, prone to human error, costly, and limited due to the lack of accessibility of certain geographic regions. As a result, the collection of high quality reference data can be very limited and in some cases there is no current way to collect large samples of reference data.